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Dairy giant Danone is seeking to double the size of its India unit through the introduction of more of its brands by 2020, with ten product launches scheduled for 2017, DeccanChronicle.com has reported. India and China are the company’s quickest-growing Asian markets, and the firm now accumulates 50% of its turnover from its emerging markets. Among the global brands set to become available in India are Neocate, a nutritional product for infants with cow-milk allergies. This wread more

Unilever has committed to ensuring that all of its plastic packaging is fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. The company has also committed to renewing its membership of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation for another three years and endorsing and supporting that organisation’s New Plastics Economy initiative. As part of this, it will publish the full “palette” of plastics materials used in its packaging by 2020 to help create a plastics protocol for the industry. Unread more

SAICA has purchased Schut, Hellema, and Lemapack from Flexible Packaging Holding (FPH). The acquisition of Schut Flexible Packaging, Hellema Verpakkingen and Lemapack is the company’s first acquisition in the flexible packaging sector in the Benelux. The three Dutch companies are active as manufacturer and international trader of flexible packaging for the food and tobacco industry.read more

Candy giant Mars Inc., facing a slowdown in packaged food, is making a bigger bet on a booming industry: pet care. The maker of M&Ms and Snickers agreed to buy the animal-hospital chain VCA Inc. for about $7.7 billion on Monday — not including debt — expanding on its existing veterinary-care business. Mars will pay $93 a share in cash, a 31 percent premium to VCA’s closing price of $70.77 on Friday. The acquisition turns Mars into a dominant company in corporate-owned peread more